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Professional Paint Procedures        revised February 05, 2008
(Due to the large number of images, some of them large, this page may take a while to load.)

The previous owner of my bike was an auto-body instructior that I worked with at the time he did the this work and
also when I bought the bike and matching trailer from him after he had an ankle altering accident falling off a ladder at home.
As he did the paint work, he produced a personal photo album of 3-1/2 x 5 inch photos using a less than stellar film camera, knowing
that this would be a professional art form once completed.  I think he succeeded and his work should serve as an adequate model for others.
Recently, I gained temporary posession of his shots and with the aid of my new, high quality Nikon camera, set up an easel and some
lights and shot the album with using 10 MP images.  Then I cropped them and did SOME cleanup work on the images but they were difficult at best.
I have assembled them in the order the process was done and at the end, added a few shots of my own to show off his work.
I hope this helps some of you out there who want to go beyond rattle cans.  Enjoy 

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The bike when original was no slouch to start with.  I would have most likely left it as-is
but you know what a driving passion is made of.
Here is the bike in it's original state...




Another shot...



Now to strip the thing.  You nekkid guys can have a gander at what the 1500 looks nekkid.  Really nekkid.



I think it looks kinda cool.



They say the real results for a profesional paint job is on the prep.  Prep = sanding.. lots of it.








Then after the sanding, the primer coat goes on.  Followed by, you guessed it, more sanding.  Wet sanding this time.


Now for the base coat.  This will be a fine metallic gold.  Gold gold everywhere.







Next the masking for the feature panels...







Now the feature panels are produced using a coarse silver metallic color and some techniques I only know a little about.






Now we are ready to add some color.  In this case X number of semi-transparent red.  The more layers, the darker and less metallic detail.










Now add 5 to 8 coats of uv-stable clear-coat with wet sand between each layer.









Now for the fun part... getting all that great looking stuff back on.




And now for the paste of resistance.  Ya, ya I knot that's not it.  But who cares, this puppy is finally back together.





Nothing left to do now but start worring about the scratches, pits, rocks, bugs, tar, scrapes, hail, birdshit, minivans....

Now, for a few shots to really show this work off.




Now the whole thing.  With the Voyager kit on and subsequent fender painting by the same person.


Notice that it starts going toward purple when the light angle is different.  I havet never seen another bike with this set of attributes.



I hope this helped some of you or at least gave you some new ideas.  Rudy